Week 1 Discussion

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?
   
   "Create a lesson" i thought was helpful. This helps provide a layout that you can easily edit to what you need, if its not quite there. The assistance allowed to lay things out smoother and quicker and then allowed me to take a look and see what I thought needed to be changed. I think this is a real game changer and can see using this to help get things moving. 
   
   
   
2. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?
   
   I was really surprised at how well the AI voice sounded and worked. I have used many different AI voice over applications and each have their issues and strengths. I feel like this is well done and will help with making things a little more interactive so people aren't just reading or watching, allowing to hear and digest it that way. 
   
   
   

1. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation? The AI feature I found most useful is the ability to edit with AI. It's quick and easy to use. Eliminates a lot of steps in having to go into the block and select the areas where you'd like to edit individually. 
2. Which editing tools (rewrite, shorten, change tone, etc.) did you find most valuable, and why? I found the AI Audio feature to be extremely valuable as this is something I have not used in the past. I was able to select the personality behind the voice and it felt less robotic when compared to other trainings I've taken in the past. I'm looking forward to using this feature moving forward. 

1. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?

The time you save and the options you have to change the tone, the text, even creating an image prompt, that surprised me a lot.

1. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?

Mainly generating the images, I always struggle with that, and even with the prompt builder it was a little hard to get to the exact idea I have on my mind.

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities?
   Really love the quiz question feature. It makes it so much faster. 
   
   
2. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?
   I really like that there are four options to choose from and that you can keep generating additional options to find the right fit for your course. 

What surprised me about how AI handled text or media generation?
I was pleasantly surprised by how well the AI would generate the same style of image if using the same prompt (with a slight change here or there) that specifies the style/aesthetic desired. I will say any image generation that included text, this was a weak spot where the text would be blurry, warped, incomprehensible, and not configurable to match theme fonts.

Text to audio generation was also really fast. This could save us hours if not days of work (and re-recording is a beast all on its own)! I love the variety of voice options that are available and most voices seemed very realistic and could add emphasis in the right places. 

What challenges did I face when trying to get AI to produce the results I wanted?
As mentioned above, any image that was AI-generated that included text came out warped - it was easier to ask it not to include any text (which was hit and miss with whether it listened or not), or to crop out any section that included text. Also the custom block is NOT included in any AI editing tools (yet?) so that limited my experimentation a bit. 

Here are my 2 Q &A’s:

1. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?

Instant Convert: I really like the “instant convert” functionality. However, I do not like that the content within the block is changed as well. For example, I’ve seen simple lists rewritten into detailed sentences when that level of revision isn’t necessary. It would be helpful to have a “change content toggle” that allows users to have a choice - retain the original text while only converting the block,  or convert both. 

A significant part of my content development workflow involves transitioning PowerPoints (faculty or publisher) into Rise presentations. In courses such as dental hygiene or pharmaceuticals, lists of medications or vocabulary terms must remain exactly as written. It becomes counterproductive to convert a block and then have to paste the original content back in. For instance, I might convert a list into an accordion because faculty requested illustrations to accompany the text. In those cases, the format should change, but the written content should remain intact.

Images: With all due respect, there are image generators that more closely mirror prompts and handle embedded text with greater accuracy. For this exercise, I selected “vector blues” as the style for the website security flashcards. Even after refining my prompt, the tool continued to introduce additional colors beyond that palette. In addition, if we are using text to generate an image - why not generate the ALT text as well? I was impressed with the watercolor style and will definitely continue experimenting with it.

Which editing tools (rewrite, shorten, change tone, etc.) did you find most valuable, and why?

Text-to-Voice: The text-to-voice feature is very impressive. The voices are far more realistic than they were even a couple of years ago, and several of the female voices I tested demonstrated “natural” inflection and pacing. There is a good variety of male and female voices across different “ages,” which is helpful from an instructional design perspective. For example, if I were developing a narrated presentation for FSW students, I could select a more youthful voice to better align with that demographic.

Current Case: I am using Camtasia to develop a training guide for our financial services team, and one of my primary source documents is a recorded webinar. Although the narration is understandable, the presenter is not a native English speaker, so much of the sentence structure does not follow standard English grammar. I separated the audio and created a text file, and I am currently using another AI tool to smooth and refine the grammar. However, this process is time-consuming.

I began this project using another AI voice generator, but I am very interested in experimenting with Rise’s text-to-voice capabilities. I really like the natural speech tones.

I suspect I could produce this more efficiently using Rise AI text functionality as well. The rewrite, shorten, and change tone features could provide faster ways to refine the narration text.

I have been using Storyline for years and Rise quite a bit the last few months. I am excited to see that Articulate has added some awesome AI additions to Storyline, as I prefer the experiences I can create with that tool better than Rise. I thought I knew what options we had, but a few surprised me!

1. What surprised you about how AI handled text or media generation?
   
   I love that it can summarize and you can pick what content to include! That's amazing for when you are branching for multiple roles. I was so excited to learn that!
2. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted?
   
   I loved the challenge for the image with no cookies! I realized you have to think outside the box in how you describe the graphic you want. That was such a fun way to learn! I already knew how important the prompt is with AI and the level of detail you must provide for good content. I was not expecting this to reframe my mindset around thinking outside the box on prompts! I am also super impressed that Storyline has created buttons that write the prompts for us!! THAT IS AWESOME! 

1. Which AI Assistant feature felt most intuitive or useful to you during the practice activities? For me, it is the AI text-to-speech function.
2. What challenges did you face when trying to get AI to produce the results you wanted? Sometimes the AI TTS voices are weird! No other word for it. Words that can only be said one way are pronounced very strangely.

1. Most useful for me is the image and audio creation. For images, even though you have to pay attention that the information on the images is correct and potentially make some edits, this is a task that often usually takes a lot of time and effort. Finding suitable images, copyright, matching style, etc. can be quite a challenge. For audio it is similar, that being able to add it directly with just one click is extremely time efficient. I currently work with AI audio that I create in another tool and then add to my content separately, so having it integrated is amazing.
2. I was surprised how good the voice options are, and how much variety there is. Even different dialects and tones that are at a really high quality and pleasant to listen to. Especially for accessibility this is extremely helpful.

AI surely is useful, it can help create course faster, with less grammatical error for non-native creator, and help shape blocks, change tone, add images and creating speech for when you don't have time and budget for a human recording.
For what I've tried and didn't like the Articulate software was for speech to text for the CC. I've found that tool quite unreliable.